Modifying Polydiacetylene Vesicle Compositions to Reduce Non-Specific Interactions

Polydiacetylene (PDA) vesicles provide useful stimuli-responsive behavior as well as by the modular structure afford a means for the design of sensing and delivery systems with tunable target specificity. To reduce inherent non-specific interaction with either anionic or cationic formulations of polydiacetylene vesicles, we explored the use of various lengths of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) amphiphiles for integration and polymerization within PDA vesicles. Our results established that as little as 1% of polyethylene glycol amphiphile integration into anionic vesicles was sufficient to significantly reduce non-specific association with mammalian cells. Similarly integrating a low percent of PEG amphiphile content within cationic vesicles could also significantly reduce non-specific cell association, and moreover reduced cytotoxicity. These results may be prove useful in augmenting PDA vesicles formulations for reduced non-specific interaction which is of particularly interest to enhancing selectivity in vesicles designed with integrated targeting moieties for sensing and drug delivery applications.